Sunday, August 23, 2009

This is a threat from windmills I hadn't heard of before

The mystery was alarming to wildlife experts: large numbers of dead bats appearing at wind farms, often with no visible signs of injury.

Researchers now think they know one reason: Wind turbines cause bats’ lungs to explode. More specifically, a sudden drop in air pressure created by the blades can cause fatal internal hemorrhaging, researchers at the University of Calgary said in a study.

The toll taken on bats highlights a delicate balance facing the wind industry—how to be “green” without causing other unintended environmental consequences.Like killing birds and bats.

Since then, the chorus of voices calling for greater protection for bats at wind farms has grown louder. Last summer, the American Society of Mammalogists called for wind farms to avoid “bat hibernation, breeding and maternity colonies.”Thus reducing the number of places to put them, and on top of thatThe cooperative has been looking for ways to bring down the death toll, including studies of the effectiveness of ultrasonic sounds that would deter bats and curtailing the spinning of turbines until it’s too windy for bats to fly.Which reduces the time you can actually use the damn things, thus reducing their efficiency even further.

7 comments:

I'm actually a little shocked they've started this already. I had thought they would have waited until oil/coal energy production had been crippled more effectively before they started their move to shut down wind/solar.

Here's another vote for Chinchillas, Our 6 are confined to cage today, their outdoor shed still needs to be cleared out after it made a 20 mile road trip yesterday.

I love bats, Not to cuddle, although I will hold them while they recover themselves if the cat has had them. I am vaccinated against rabies, otherwise I'd steer well clear!

It is interesting that Britain and Ireland are classified as rabies free, yet the bat populations carry it, you'd have thought there would be a pathway to other animals (a British bat fanatic died of rabies a few years ago).

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Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave. - Capt. Mal

A Rifleman’s Prayer:Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses. Geek with a .45

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day." Ebenezar McCoy

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